Great project, John. It's funny that you're contemplating whether it's worth using the Aires cockpit to upgrade the Trumpeter one. I used parts of the Trumpeter cockpit to upgrade the Hasegawa kit when I built it!

Thanks Kevin! The Trumpeter cockpit is quite good, IMO. Good enough to debate whether or not to use the resin. Since it is integral to the Aires set, I'll probably end up using the resin but I don't think the difference is very noticeable in the pit.

If the undercarriage legs seem too long, it could be that the aircraft Trumpeter used as a reference ( photo's, drawings or museum aircraft ) were devoid of fuel/equipment/ordinance etc, and were therefore at the full extent of the oleo's. A lot of manufactures should offer fully extended or compressed versions of U/C legs. so as to give we, the modelers a choice of posing our model as either "in flight" coming in to land, or "on the ground" fully loaded.

Oh, one other thing, we do Maths here in the UK, Maths is made up of a sum of numbers with an answer the result. A number on it's own is just a number and not Math as how did you get the answer without doing the Maths

All joking aside, I look forward to this build , if only to give me some inspiration to get mine out of the loft/attic.

Bob.

Thanks Victor! I'll do a bit more research before I start chopping up the landing gear. But it does appear that many 262's had a distinct "squat" to them.

Great start John. Really enjoy your detailed build threads!

Dan

Thanks Dan! It will be a while before I can really jump into this one with both feet. Still need to wrap up the 1/48 Hien and I have an overseas trip coming in a few weeks.

I’ll be looking forward to this one John as the rest have also mentioned. Great subject and start so far.

Troy

Thanks Troy!

John,

As a relative novice when it comes to resin, I appreciate your insights as to how to go about it.

I can definitely see that there is some improvement with the resin parts.

Gaz

I have a long way to go before I feel comfortable with resin. The more I work with it, the less fear I have but the irritation factor seems to be increasing.

John,

I am so glad you are documenting your projects with such care. As usual, your attention to the details is top notch. I will definitely have some more to offer you here, having discussed with Thomas 1/32 Jumos in detail from a modeling perspective, but these notes will be shared when you begin work on the engines, I think, to preserve your wonderful flow to the story you are telling. Personally I go back and forth on whether to leave a cover off one engine since the Jumos were so fussy to maintain. Have you considered this option?

All the best,

Bruce

Hi Bruce! Always a pleasure to hear your comments! I like my aircraft with the canopy shut and all panels and hatches closed. I don't think I'll be changing with the 262 even though it seems like leaving some of the panels open on this kit would be easier than shutting them. Maybe I'll leave the canopy open, if it doesn't affect the look too much.

That's interesting. Here in the U.S. we have something similar called Mathematics. We can not only do sums, but we can also find products, square roots, areas and volumes and all manner of wonderful things. Perhaps we can arrange to send over some samples with our next shipment of Justin Timberlake albums and Supernatural dvd box sets.

As long as you don't send Trump over here, I will gladly have a shipment of JT albums and Supernatural dvd's.

Without British help and invention (Jet engine) your aircraft would still be operating with pistons and beeswax

I jumped back into the 262 as my work on the 1/48 Hien is complete and I'm just twiddling my thumbs when I get home from work. Still feeling out the Aires resin set and I'm not feeling good about it. Mostly due to the lack of instructions, horrible really. There is absolutely no mention or illustration of how the Aires cockpit and wheel bay components fit with the existing Trumpeter parts. And it's obviously not a drop-in, one-for-one replacement. I thought that maybe my instructions were short a page but looking at the downloaded instructions over at Scalemates... same dreadful deal.

Hopefully, I'll gain confidence as I play around with both the kit and resin parts. I still need to figure out which kits are replaced by the resin parts. Aires supplies a standalone nose wheel bay while the Trumpeter counterpart is integrated into the the gun bay compartment above it. I cobbled the Trumpeter nose well/gun bay together... nice tight fit which is perfect for the dry-fitting exercises that I'm running through.

Leaving the guns and other details off, I've tried fitting this plus the cockpit tub into the fuselage. Some Trumpeter strangeness... ALL the fuselage fuel tanks are represented although they will be completely blocked off by bulkheads. I guess the rear one could be glimpsed if you were to shine a torch into the open side panel on the starboard side (molded open). But that front tank... it's gone. Maybe the tanks are a nod to the clear edition, which I know Trumpeter makes available. If I can find a way to fill the front tank with lead, I'll put it in.

The nose sub-assembly and the cockpit assembly can be installed independently of one another. Fit of the Trumpeter parts so far seems very good.

While I have the fuselage together, I want to see how the nose hatches and cowlings look buttoned down. The lower panels which house the ammo ejection ports have an ok fit... will probably need some shimming to close the gaps. I wish that Trumpeter molded these into the fuselage as I see no reason to have them as separate parts.

Up on top, the rear gun covers would not sit down and I determined that it was due to the little tab on the forward gun compartment bulkhead. I snipped those off.

Once those tabs were off, the rear gun covers fit pretty well. The forward gun cowling (with the cannon openings) are an imperfect fit. There is a small tab on the front contact edge which prevents that whole edge from sitting flush. But it almost looks like it's designed to create a gap... before I go chopping it off, I'll do a little research into that edge to see what the real plane looked like.

Overall, the fit looks pretty good. The gun compartment bulkheads aids in the placement and fit of the cowlings so I definitely want to keep them.

I like the fit so much that I've decided to ditch the resin nose gear bay and stick to the kit parts. This will eliminate the detective work of trying to figure out how to marry the resin bay to the kit gun compartment and save me from the surgery that would surely be required. I can use the resin nose bay as a guide to add a bit of detail to the kit bay, if I can work within the confines of those narrow walls.

I am looking forward to your interpretation of this most fascinating aircraft. My colleague Dave Wadman and I first reported on "Yellow 3+I" way back in 1997 in one of our Experten Decals books. I offer below a few comments for your consideration.

Based on continuing research by Dan O'Connell, this Me 262 was probably WNr.170305, a machine originally assigned to I.KG(J) 54 in the autumn of 1944. Sometime in mid February 1945 it was transferred to III./KG(J) 54, specifically its 9. Staffel. Last year a new photo of it turned up on Ebay that revealed its full code "B3+AT", with the missing third character "A" visible,. The unit code "B3" was in small characters and not visible with just a small square patch of fresh paint visible. This was the full Verbandkennzeichen it wore until late March 1945 when all KG(J) units dispensed with their alpha-numeric bomber style codes and used the numeric fighter style.

The machine was now coded "Yellow 3" with the III. Gruppe vertical bar, and both markings in yellow outlined in black. The yellow III. Gruppe diagonal sash worn by the unit during the February-March period was overpainted but the Totenkopfwappen was retained. And of course, the unit's newly assigned blue and white tail band was also applied at this time. Note that III. Gruppe was unique with its Me 262 aircraft being documented via photographs wearing three styles of this marking. These new markings were thus relatively clean and fresh and contrasted with the worn and faded camouflage colours of this old aircraft.

Yellow 3's main camouflage was the dark green version of RLM 81 applied to all uppersurfaces and RLM 76 on the undersides. That the machine was heavily weathered is attested to the observation of the puttied seams bleeding through the surface paint. The tail and rudder were painted in RLM 76 and hard-edged mottles of RLM 70 Schwarzgrün as confirmed by colour photos of a related machine "V303", WNr.170303. This component was an experimental wooden tail manufactured by a subcontractor. It was well-painted and had a slight sheen. And being an early production aircraft had the fared-in rear light as opposed to the bulb style supplied with the kite.

Best of luck with the build.

Cheers,

David

PS: Drop me a line and I can forward the images to assist with your build.

It's an honor to have you drop in on my humble build! I'm always open to the words of those that are more knowledgeable than I. I am aware of your previous works and really appreciate the additional insights that you have shared concerning this aircraft. Fascinating stuff especially about the Werknumber and bomber codes. I was able to round up photographs of the pages of your Experten Decals booklet as a reference and would love to see any other views of Yellow 3 that are available. Painting is a long way off and I am currently mired in the vagaries of this daggum Aires resin set but your comments about the colors are peaking my interest. You say main topside color is the green version of RLM81 and not the more commonly referred to RLM 83 Dark Green? From the one photo that I have of Yellow 3 showing her starboard side, the color along the seams appear to be darker than the camo color. Is that the primer showing through? What would be an appropriate color choice for this darker color?

Some more fiddling with the 262. Here is a better view of that tab on the nose cowl. It looks like the tab gives the proper fit at the front but leaves a gap along the bottom edge of the cowling.

I tried to make sure (without glue of course) that the cowling was fully seated on the bulkheads and flush with the nose cone.

The little tab and resultant gap are present on the other side too. This gap isn't evident in any of the photos that I've seen so I'm assuming its just a badly designed/molded part of the model. It shouldn't be a problem to glue a thin shim along that edge.

Having decided not to use the resin nose gear well, the questions regarding the model forward of the cockpit tub have been answered. Another area that the Aires set proposes to replace are the main landing gear boxes in the wings. Based on their instructions, Aires would have you attach the boxes (RP 21 and 22) along the thin edge of the outer wheel well walls. Without any pins, tabs, slots, ridges to help guide placement. Just slap some glue, hang em on there and if by miracle the glue holds, they should automatically orient themselves laterally, longitudinally and at the right angle. <Sigh>

I have enough experience with Aires stuff to know that there usually is a method to their madness. A lack of instructions doesn't necessarily mean that things won't fit... you just have to hope that you can find the keys to success on your own. That happened on a Academy 1/4 P-38 build. Once I figured out (without help from the instructions) that the Aires resin tub was designed to fit into the TOP fuselage half and not the BOTTOM, things went relatively smoothly.

The main landing boxes on the kit are molded into the top of the wings. So let's take a look at how those look, keeping close attention to the relative position of the landing gear attachment points.

The Aires boxes aren't that much more detailed than the kit's. The wiring is much better defined though.

The Aires boxes seem to fit within the existing structure of the wing bottoms. There's even some positive location aids in the form of the internal ribs. This should allow a positive fit IF the boxes are indeed in the right location.

Flipping the wing over, we can see the relative location of the landing gear attachment points and it looks like a go.

Coming along nicely!! Just one point, the canon covers do need a small shim at the bottom! I glued a shim on then sanded it all flush before attaching the canon covers in the closed position!
Cheers
Alan

Taking a look at the nose gear... Trumpeter supplies both metal and plastic versions of the landing gear legs. Ideally, I'd like to use the metal ones because of the weight that will be added to the nose. However, the metal gear has a nasty mold line which will be hard to remove because the hardness of the metal. Also... most production 262's did not have the oleo scissors on the nose gear. I should cut them off but again... difficult to do because it is metal not plastic.

To aid me in the metal mold line removal, I employ a recently purchased set of grinding tools for a Dremel. It was here on LSP that this set was discussed.

Much easier with the right tools. I couldn't trim the mold line as cleanly as I wanted but it looks much better than before. I'll tackle removal of the oleo scissors later.

Taking a look at how the nose gear fits in the well to see if I can add any detail. There are some ejector pin marks that need to be filled.

Sterling progress John. I like your fit and fettle mode of assembly. So much less work getting a smooth finish if you have got the parts to fit as well as they can before you glue them together.

If I can suggest you might look to getting a polishing/buffing wheel for your Dremel. They look a bit like a Scotchbrite pad in wheel form but they work a treat in smoothing out the final finish on weirdly shaped white metal parts without smashing all the fine detail. I've used them a lot on prepping white metal figures to remove that slightly rough cast texture. 000 steel wool works as well but leaves lots of nasty metal fuzz everywhere.

So nice to see a builder having fun building models

Dan

Edited by ScanmanDan, 03 February 2018 - 11:36 PM.

CANicoll and Thunnus like this

These thoughts courtesy of a madman found chained to his workbench hidden deep within his subterranean Factory of Devious Inventions.

That is one thing that really annoys me with Trumpeter kits and that's open panels. I have yet to build one of their kits were the panels fit well. I would probably have more of their kits if it wasn't for that issue.

Sterling progress John. I like your fit and fettle mode of assembly. So much less work getting a smooth finish if you have got the parts to fit as well as they can before you glue them together.

If I can suggest you might look to getting a polishing/buffing wheel for your Dremel. They look a bit like a Scotchbrite pad in wheel form but they work a treat in smoothing out the final finish on weirdly shaped white metal parts without smashing all the fine detail. I've used them a lot on prepping white metal figures to remove that slightly rough cast texture. 000 steel wool works as well but leaves lots of nasty metal fuzz everywhere.

So nice to see a builder having fun building models

Dan

Definitely having fun, Dan! Buffing wheel sounds like a solid recommendation. I used a wire wheel and then a brush wheel to shine up the parts.

That is one thing that really annoys me with Trumpeter kits and that's open panels. I have yet to build one of their kits were the panels fit well. I would probably have more of their kits if it wasn't for that issue.

It's something I can live with especially if there are no alternatives. From what I've read, I expect more fit issues when I get to the engine nacelles.

Oh wow, those grinding tools really did the job. Might add a set to my wishing list.

No need to wish... they were dirt cheap. Less than $10 USD.

I used a diamond wheel on my Dremel to saw off the oleo scissors.

Some more Dremel action to clean up the cut marks. The nice thing about the metal legs is that I won't have to paint the shiny part. I can simply mask it off when I put a primer coat on the piece.